इन्तेग्रतेद Marketing

As Benjamin Franklin said during the Revolutionary War, “Gentleman, we must hang together or we will hang separately.” Neither marketing nor sales can succeed on their own; but together, working in unison, they create a powerful, almost irresistible force. Marketing needs the feedback from sales to determine what is working and what isn’t. They must know what promotions work and those that don’t. Sales cannot be competitive without the tools that an enlightened marketing can provide.

Integrated Marketing or Collaborative Selling is where all aspects of the organization, marketing, sales, support, customer service, are found within one umbrella organization and all facets, data bases, personnel, etc are integrated to optimize previously discrete business departments. The objective is to link all the business processes among all these common elements into a smooth flowing cooperative endeavor. If successful, the end result will be the creation of a Customer-centric organizations.

We want to be one company, providing a single face, to the customer. Therefore, you must integrate all interactions to the customer to create the customer expectations and customer experience that is relevant and useful to that customer. Companies that integrate internally across those sales and marketing process see benefits exceeding 20 to 30 percent over those that do not integrate. The ultimate is thinking of sales and marketing as one and not two organizations linked together. Consistency is the key: to be viewed at all times through all angles by all customers the same way, providing the same message.

Integration continues to gain ground slowly and painfully. Necessity, not corporate vision, will continue to drive the process of improved marketing and sales integration. Silo-based management of sales and marketing resources promotes waste and thwarts results measurement. It also creates a procedural barrier to ensuring that organizational actions align with organizational goals related to sales and customer retention

Major barriers to integration remain. Don't bet on integrated marketing becoming a corporate fad. Unlike past fads, the process of integrating business development and retention faces some unique obstacles that actually might benefit the process in the long run. Perhaps the biggest obstacle is the lack of a clear champion, short of the chief executive. Integrated strategies span sales, marketing, human resources, and operations, and few people, aside from very senior executives, have responsibilities spanning this range.

Large companies such as IBM have created integrated marketing groups, but even these don't necessarily tie into the customer service and operational issues that go along with the need to fulfill marketing promises at the operational level. Large ad agencies for years have claimed to offer this service, but, with few exceptions, integration really means the offering of additional direct marketing, promotional, or other tactical services, and not high-level organizational consulting potentially needed to align organizational silos with organizational goals. (Coke recently announced that its next ad agency will have to come up with inventive new ways to promote the brand beyond creating new types of television ads.)

Companies with a results-oriented, integrated approach to business development and retention almost always run their businesses this way, because the bosses insist on it. In the meantime, more and more of the nation's business schools are turning out students with exposure in one way or another to the emerging area of integrated management,
which could eventually create a new group of leaders less wedded to a specific
tactic.

Integrated marketing is the wave of the future and the separator for companies that will succeed and those that will fail. Which will you be?